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Survey of Nebraska and Wisconsin soybean producers on dicamba use during 2017 and 2018
Maxwel C. Oliveira¹, Christopher Proctor², Paul Mitchell¹, Amit Jhala² and Rodrigo Werle¹

¹ University of Wisconsin-Madison and ² University of Nebraska-Lincoln

¹Corresponding author’s E-mail: max.oliveira@wisc.edu

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Due to off-target dicamba movement incidents during the 2017 and 2018 growing seasons, adoption of the Xtend technology (dicamba and glyphosate-tolerant soybeans) has become a controversial topic in the United States.
The OBJECTIVE of the survey was to understand Nebraska and Wisconsin stakeholders’ adoption and opinion related to the Xtend technology.

From August through September of 2018, a survey containing 22 questions related to soybean, dicamba and weed management was conducted in Nebraska and Wisconsin (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Survey questions of soybean production and dicamba use in Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Survey respondents as agronomist, co-op, university and industry representatives were grouped into Decision influencer.
Data are presented as a % of responses from decision influencer and farmer of Nebraska and Wisconsin.
Q4 is presented as the share of Xtend hectares compared to the total of soybean hactares reported in Q3; Q5 is the share of PRE-applied dicamba hectares compared to the total of Xtend hactares reported in Q4; Q6 is the share of POST-applied dicamba hectares compared to the total of Xtend hactares reported in Q4.
Data analysis was conducted in R statistical software using functions %>%, select, summarise, group, filter and mutate of tidyverse (ggplot, tidyr, dplyr) package.
Method loess (local polynomial) regression fitting was performed in Q4, Q5, and Q6 (Figures 4, 5, and 6).

Figure 2. Map of survey respondents of Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Figure 3. Primary role of survey respontens from Nebraska (n=316) and Wisconsin (n=149).

Figure 4. Share of Xtend soybean hectares planted in Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Figure 5. Share of PRE-applied dicamba in Xtend soybean hectares in Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Figure 6. Share of POST-applied dicamba in Xtend soybean hectares in Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Figure 7. General farm management.

Figure 8. Dicamba formulation adopted in Nebraska (n=149) and Wiscosnin (n=44).

Figure 9. Dicamba application POST-emergence in Xtend soybeans.

Figure 10. Impact on non-Xtend soybeans hectares.

Figure 11. Main causes for dicamba injury according to survey respondents to non-Xtend soybeans

We would like to thank Lisa Jasa and Sarah Striegel for their assistance, and the survey respondents for their time and valuable feedback.

Faster adoption of the technology in Nebraska is likely due to bigger challenges faced with the widespread presence of herbicide-resistant weeds when compared to Wisconsin.
In general, Nebraska and Wisconsin growers tended to be more conservative in their answers than decision influencers.
These survey responses will aid growers and decision influencers understand current and future adoption of the Xtend technology in the upper Midwest.
Further surveys regarding soybean production and dicamba use englobing additional states are necessary to better understand and document stakeholders adoption and opinion related to the Xtend technology.